This year the party and closing reception take place on Thursday, December 17th from 6-9 p.m. at the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery at 148 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.

Camel’s Hump, Vermont. Photo: Petermann

Gallery Director Orin Langelle and GJEP Executive Director Anne Petermann will give brief presentations at 7 p.m. about the mission of the gallery and GJEP including ways you can get involved.

There will be music, wine, hors d’oeuvres, and we will celebrate the Solstice and the return of longer days.

We also hope to have some exciting news to share about a new venue for Orin Langelle’s historic exhibit: The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise, Revisited. If you haven’t seen it yet, this will be your last chance to see it in Buffalo…

Truman Capote with Peter Beard at Studio 54 during Beard’s 40th birthday party. This photo by Orin Langelle was published in the Adventures and Misadventures of Peter Beard in Africa, by Jon Bowmaster (1993)

Below is an edited excerpt from the Gallery statement about the exhibit:

Art means many different things

At the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery, the exhibits we choose illustrate and demonstrate the intersection of the realms of art and politics regarding the times in which we live.

Sometimes art should creatively communicate the reality hidden behind the propaganda we encounter in or our daily lives, where most communication is designed to sell something you probably do not need or that makes you feel good about yourself–from McMansions to reality shows, to drugs and/or belief systems with no mental challenge.

A group of artists and activists worked almost a month to turn a pile of obsolete office equipment seized from Burning Books co-owner Leslie James Pickering during the 2001 FBI raid into an installation highlighting free speech, art and state repression.

In addition to the now released office equipment (still tagged as evidence), the show features censored government documents, photographs, first-hand accounts, and statements by Pickering and Civil Rights attorney Michael Kuzma.

It is ludicrous and absurd that the FBI held these objects for fourteen years. If there were any incriminating evidence, it would likely have been found very quickly. The seizure of the equipment, and its confiscation for fourteen years, was intended to squash free speech.

This exhibit is about art, the repression and liberation of free speech and maybe a subliminal or not so subliminal message: In a world where we see more and more potentially apocalyptic scenes, especially with increasingly common climate catastrophes, is “civilization” and the dominant economic system pushing the inhabitants on Earth to the brink?

¡Buen Vivir! Gallery in Allentown, Buffalo marks first anniversary with this exhibit:

The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise, Revisited

Babatunde Olatunji (left) was a Nigerian drummer, educator, social activist and recording artist with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at opening for The End of the Game. One of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ major accomplishments was her financial contribution to the arts and historic preservation—ICP was one of the recipients

Photographs by Orin Langelle

First Friday Reception, 6 November 2015, 6 – 9 p.m.

Wine and hors d’oeuvres served

¡Buen Vivir! Gallery, 148 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo, NY

With the support of the Peter Beard Studio in Manhattan, the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery presents this exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Beard’s book, The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise.

Beard spent many years in Africa documenting the impact of Western civilization on elephants, other wildlife and the people who lived there.In 1977 Beard had the first one-person show at Manhattan’s International Center of Photography, The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise. Over four months Orin Langelle photographed Beard and the people, many celebrities (including Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote), that were part of Beard’s life prior to and during the exhibit’s installation and the subsequent opening, plus Beard’s 40th birthday party at Studio 54 in January of 1978.

In the early 60s Beard worked at Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, during which time he photographed and documented (illegally) the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5,000 Black Rhinos. Beard’s work and commentary shed light onto what happens when ecosystems are disrupted, indigenous hunters who are in balance with nature pushed off their lands, and the encroachment of western civilization. That was fifty years ago.

Langelle’s work at the International Center of Photography gave him a rare insight into Beard, whose controversial views on ecology then, are just as relevant today. The upcoming UN Climate Summit in Paris, for example, will discuss enacting similar damaging models of conservation directed at Indigenous Peoples’ lands.

The 50th Anniversary edition of Beard’s The End of the Game is scheduled to be released this month. The ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery has advance copies to view.